Opendoor, the nation’s fastest-growing online real estate marketplace — which is radically simplifying the way people buy and sell homes — today announced a $400M investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund. The company also announced it has secured access to more than $2B in debt financing from top banks. As it rapidly expands to new markets across the U.S., Opendoor will use the funds to accelerate development of the first technology platform to make it easier to buy, sell and trade-in homes with one seamless transaction. SoftBank Investment Advisers' Jeffrey Housenbold will join the Opendoor board of directors.

Can anyone invest in startups?Anyone Can Invest in a Startup, But Should You? ... Now, anyone can, although the regulations do come with some limits: individuals with income below $100,000 can invest up to $2,000, or 5% of their annual income, while investors making between $100,000 and $200,000 may invest up to 10% of their annual income.

Venture capital is an ideal financing structure for startups that need capital to scale and will likely spend a significant amount of time in the red to build their business into an extraordinarily profitable company. Big name companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google were once venture-backed startups.

Unlike car dealerships and airlines – companies with valuable physical assets and more predictable cash flows – startups typically have little collateral to offer against a traditional loan. Therefore, if an investor were to issue a loan to a startup, there’s no way to guarantee that the investors could recoup the amount they’ve lent out if the startup were to fail.

By raising venture capital rather than taking out a loan, startups can raise money that they are under no obligation to repay. However, the potential cost of accepting that money is higher – while traditional loans have fixed interest rates, startup equity investors are buying a percentage of the company from the founders. This means that the founders are giving investors rights to a percentage of the company profits in perpetuity, which could amount to a lot of money.